Charlotte Mason

After a year of doing Sonlight (which I loved but it was just a little too structured for me), I happened on Charlotte Mason. I am not going to go into all of Charlotte Mason's homeschooling philosophies. Her theories and ideas are written out in a six volume set! (I have only made it 99% of the way through the first volume.) But, there are a lot of great books out there that have taken much of her information and put it in a more doable form. I have read Susan Schaeffer Macaulay's For the Children's Sake, and Karen Andreola's Charlotte Mason. I am currently reading Catherine Levison's Charlotte Mason Education.

A few of the main reasons I am attracted to the Charlotte Mason style of homeschooling are she believes in short lessons on any given subject, she feels good habits are very important and doing things right the first time are a must, and reading books, as opposed to text books, are the mode of learning. She felt that great literature will inspire children to have great thoughts and ideas.

A child's education, in the early years, should be spent mostly outside. And that given the freedom to explore, a child would develop a desire to learn things. On a nature walk, a teacher is never to lecture. Let the children explore and ask questions as they are moved to. Grammar and spelling, in the beginning, are taught, again, by reading good literature.

Narration is the form of "testing" used. The focus is on what a child knows as opposed to what a child doesn't know. At least once a day, after a certain subject has been read, the child is to tell back in his/her own words what was read. CM felt that the telling back of something read made the child the "owner" of the information. How many times did you take a test, only to forget the information once the test was over?

These are just some of the things that appealed to me about Charlotte Mason. We might tweak our schooling a little more this coming year. We will just have to wait and see.

What curriculum do you use? And, why?